Thursday, November 4, 2010

﻿﻿﻿ Wallace Carathers' is considered the Father of Science in man-made polymers. He is the man responsible for most of the clothes we wear today, most of the things we use today, and so many man-made objects that we have today. Yes, he invented polymers, in other words our main resource for clothes and anything that involves plastic. This man is also responsible for 49 other patents in his life. He was a brilliant organic chemist, and will live on through his accomplishments. His relationship between science and engineering in his creating of nylon was very important. He used his background in organic chemistry to help him build a new, cheaper, and more versatile version of silk. The chemists used chemicals they extracted from coal, water, air, petroleum, natural gas, and agricultural by-products to nylon. And with engineering skills they put all of these chemicals together to form this amazing fabric. Nylon was revolutionary because it ultimately changed most everything that we use on a daily basis now. In the medical field they use nylon strands to stitch wounds together, in the clothing industry nylon is used for an array of many different things, it's used in fishing line, in carpets, in parachutes, in machine parts, in tires, in hair brushes, in pantie-hoes, and in all sorts of fabrics. It was revolutionary in the fact that it gave us a chance to make so many different things so much faster, and cheaper.

Synthetic materials have changed the products that are available today because there are so much more available! I mean, without these synthetic materials there wouldn't be half as much as there is out there now. These materials are the basis of what most things in the store are made of. Also, it made the products that we do buy much more cheaper, because if they weren't using these materials they would most likely still be using silk, which is much more expensive then nylon. The synthetic materials that I come into contact with today are the clothes that I wear every day! They are all made with nylon or some form of synthetic material. Also my tires on my car, my hair brush, my furniture. All of which I use everyday. If synthetic materials didn't exist I think that all of those things would be made with silk. Since ultimately nylon was based off of silk, and has many similar qualities.